


Ersatz

by Spylace



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Accidental Marriage, Alternate Universe, Chauvinism, M/M, Mythology - Freeform, sorta - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-28
Updated: 2013-10-28
Packaged: 2017-12-30 15:48:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1020519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spylace/pseuds/Spylace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Wait, where are we? What are we doing here? Where are the flowers? I thought there would be flowers.” </p><p>Raleigh marries for love but not the person he's in love with. Chuck marries for love but not from any sense of romance. </p><p>In which Chuck and Raleigh get married for all the wrong reasons but come together in the end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ersatz

**Author's Note:**

> A fill for a [prompt](http://pacificrimkink.livejournal.com/2747.html?thread=4062139#t4062139) at Pacific Rim Kink Meme: Would like to see Chuck/Raleigh pairing incorporating a decidedly supernatural (genre, not the TV show!) aspect, preferably as lifted from your favorite folklore.

“I need a wife.” Raleigh said to no one in particular.

“So you’ve said. The first seven million times.” Yancy replied thoughtfully, holding a mug of coffee like he held the universe in his hands. “Thought you wanted in on Mori’s pants.”

“She says she wants to wait.”

Yancy gave him a look. Raleigh elaborated. “She says she wanted someone more experienced.”

Like the terrible brother he was, Yancy cracked up.

“How’s marriage going to solve your problems? Mori’s not going to play second fiddle to some mortal sacrifice.”

Raleigh scowled.

“Then I’ll just have to figure out something else.”

 

Hannibal Chau was a god whose services you never engaged unless you were really fucking desperate.

Raleigh was really fucking desperate.

The god of commerce, thieves and bargains sat in his cushy office, enjoying the attentions of several wood nymphs when he was brought inside, blinded by the sheer amount of gold bolted to the walls. Waving away the giggling women who then sprawled artfully across a chaise by the windows, Chau swung his feet off his desk and turned his full attention to Raleigh.

“So what can I do for the god of death?”

“Um, I’m just filling in for Sasha.”

Raleigh was beginning to feel the familiar prickle of regret climb his spine. But he steeled himself. This was for Mako after all. He needed to show her that he was serious. That he could provide for her and the dozen children they would have together. What better way than through practice.

He cleared his throat. “I need a wife.”

A single sheet of vellum appeared in front of him, filling automatically with words that seemed to be written entirely in blood. Chau pushed it toward him, waving a pen and a glass of dark-honey mead in his hands. The striped eyeball in his left socket rolled madly while its twin, the blue, pierced with the kind of intensity of a cat dissecting a mouse.

“If you sign this, you have to wait three moons before you consummate your marriage. In that time, you may not murder, main, mutilate him or her in anyway. You may _**not**_ ask for refunds but you may break the contract in three-month’s time if it turns out you hate each other’s guts. If you have any complaints, suck it up and forever hold your peace.”

His fingers fumbled as he gripped the pen, scrawling along the dotted line.

Chau snatched up the vellum immediately. Satisfied, he asked “Got any preferences kid? I don’t suggest celestial nymphs, too prudish.”

“I like spring.” He blurted out. Winter was hard on Hell. Sasha did not believe in central heating.

“Spring eh, any other preferences?”

“Flexible.” Raleigh added meekly, sipping his mead. “I need them to be flexible.”

“That can be arranged.” Chau said after a pause.

“I don’t actually want to get married.” He admitted. “But there’s this girl...”

“It’s always a girl.” The other god said, rolling up his contract. “Don’t worry kid; I’ve got the perfect person in mind.”

 

“Wait, where are we? What are we doing here? Where are the flowers? I thought there would be flowers.” Raleigh asked in alarm as he was whisked away towards the sea where thick rolls of fat frolicked in the waves. They all stood at attention when he stood atop a dune, frighteningly out of place in leather and black armor, their eyes large and accusing.

One of them shuffled to the front and he saw that unlike its friends, it was silver and black like the pitted surface of the moon. He was surprised when it pushed itself off the ground, the sleek seal pelt parting to reveal a man inside almost as tall as himself. The man, an ocean deity by the looks of him, pale like the sand with his hair set ablaze by the tropical sun, crossed his arms, completely unashamed of his nudity as he stood like something born from a master’s hands.

If he hadn’t been in love with Mako already, he would have called it love at first sight.

“Here’s advice to you kid free of charge. Don’t sell yourself so short.”

Chau dragged him forward, “I now pronounce you husband and wife.”

 

The sea god was only happy to agree. As a herd of seals as their witnesses—“That” the god interrupted sullenly, “is not how it happened.”

He had a strange accent, his new wife.

At first, Raleigh thought it was the sky dialect, the nobler speech used by denizens of the Sky Shatterdome. Then he remembered that his spouse came from the sea. He had never met anyone from the sea. Some said that the gods of the Siren Shatterdome were ghosts of the drowned seeking vengeance from sailors’ blood. Others said that they were convicts, oath breakers and murderers cast out when Stacker Pentecost took reign of the heavens.

But most agreed that the sea gods were dangerous. Only a hundred years ago, the ocean had spent its fury wiping Anteverse, a great human city, off the map. The mortals had done everything from sacrificing animals to sacrificing man. The Earth Shatterdome had fumed but as Anteverse straddled the shoreline, tied neither to the land nor the sea, there was nothing they could do. 

“...I only agreed because Chau threatened club the lot of them.”

Yancy turned to him slowly.

“Raleigh, what did you _do_?”

 

In the morning, Raleigh woke up thinking it all a dream. He nearly screamed when he saw his wife lying next to him stiff as a board, the dark circles beneath his eyes making it clear that he had not gotten a wink of sleep the night before.

“What are you still doing here?” He hissed, keeping his voice low.

Yancy hated it if he was woken from work. Being the literal king of Hell did not preclude him from vicious noogies.

“We’re married.” His wife reminded him, jaws tight.

“Oh” Raleigh couldn’t think of anything. “Go make me some breakfast.” The god’s expression was thunderous. He winced. “Please?”

 

“You have to put him back.” Yancy said, awake for once as he shoveled scrambled eggs into his mouth.

The he in question bustled around, tucking extra helpings of bacon and toast on their plates and filling their cups with freshly-squeezed orange juice.

“I don’t know.” Raleigh replied, biting off the end of a sausage. “I could get used to this.”

Yancy stared sternly.

“Ray. Do you even know his name?”

 

Overnight, Hell was transformed into a habitable place. Even Hermann seemed impressed.

“Look,” Raleigh said patiently. “I just want your name.”

“You made it perfectly clear I’m just a stand-in. You don’t need my name mate.” He sneezed. “Blimey, when was the last time you cleaned this place?”

Raleigh shifted uncomfortably. Sasha had been the ultimate bachelor.

“Well then, what should I call you?”

The other god paused from his dusting, glancing over with pale grey eyes. He resumed promptly but he replied, “Call me Chuck.”

 

Chuck was a god of many talents and many complaints.

“What’s wrong with the way we’re running things?” Raleigh demanded as Yancy startled awake from his nap.

“It’s crowded.” Chuck disparaged. “People have to wait in line.”

The worst part was that Hermann and Jazmine seemed to agree, nodding along every point that the other god brought up.

“They’re _dead_.” Raleigh stressed.

“They’re paying customers.” Chuck countered. “There’s no need to be rude.”

 

“You... are... my... number... one...” Raleigh stopped. “Chuck! What’s a word that rhymes with one!!?”

 

After they were banished to the lower realms for pissing off Pentecost, Sasha gave them two rooms between them, one for Raleigh the other for Yancy. They were free to decorate it as they liked, their only sanctuary in a place where nosy souls poked around waiting for the ferry to come and carry them over to the other side.

After putting a fist through the disturbingly appreciative ghost of a senator, Chuck condescended to sleep beside him most nights in a pile of resentment between the sheets. For the sake of peace, Raleigh didn’t say anything but he was swiftly growing used to the knee tucked between his legs, feet warming themselves on the flesh of his calves, and arms trapping him against a broad chest.

One night, Chuck didn’t bother with his requisite speech of what would happen if Raleigh chose to put his hand anywhere on his person. Raleigh took it as a private victory that Chuck was warming up to him.

“Wipe that look off your face.” Chuck snapped, slotting his head beneath his chin. Raleigh raised his arms automatically and wrapped them around the sea god’s shoulders. “I’m not that kind of a girl.”

 

Gifts began trickling in from all corners of the earth.

Hermann gave them a set of matching lanterns that would never go out, Sasha a black leopard skin from the far south. Tendo got them a dove that would deliver messages rain or sunshine while Newt sent a vial of blue liquid that was supposed to enhance every desire.

From the Wei Tang Clan, the three aspects of war, they received a tree which would bloom glorious white in the dead of the night, a chain mail that made the wearer impervious to damage and a red banner with no inscription which Chuck tucked under his breastplate.

Raleigh’s skin tingled where they touched and the other god blushed in realization.

But in the end, it was Yancy’s gift that impressed Chuck the most, an enormous lake that fed into the ocean. Raleigh pouted when Chuck stripped and slid into the water, his silver head poking out with a happy bark.

“Cheater” Raleigh grumbled. Yancy was the god of sleep and whatever sundries and descriptions that came with.

Sky Shatterdome’s gifts came almost two weeks into his marriage.

Pentecost’s message was short but dotted in relief.

It might have been the sparkly ink the other god used.

“It’s very...” Yancy started, too tired to be anything other than unfailingly polite.

“Different” Tendo offered, bouncing on one winged foot to the next.

“Illogical” Herman concluded. “Considering its recipients.”  

“Avant-garde” Jazmine suggested, “Hey, I bet it’ll look perfect next to the toll gate.”

And Chuck, who said what everyone else had been thinking “What the hell is that thing?”

A man and a woman were locked in a fierce embrace, their legs fused together and separating only at the chest. The woman’s marble breasts hung low, heavy with milk. The man’s engorged phallus stood between them like the stamen of a mature flower, riddled with dark veins.

It was a fertility statue bestowing love and good health. The runes were at their feet were actually numbers to mark the moon days and ovulation. Chuck looked a little green around the edges when Hermann pointed it all out in complete apathy.

“Okay, that, that is going into storage.”

Raleigh couldn’t agree fast enough.

 

“It might be a good idea you know.”

“What?” Raleigh huffed as he closed the door behind them.

He was the god of the dead; he was supposed to be above menial labor. But somehow Chuck had persuaded him that the statue needed to go. Since throwing anything in the Styx was out of the question—they would never hear the end of it when the ghosts started having babies or something—they stored Pentecost’s gift in a little known closet filled with bottles of cider.

“Sand grubs” Chuck replied, stamping his feet to keep warm.

Raleigh hurriedly shrugged off his cape, throwing the black velvet around the other god’s head.

Chuck shot him a grateful look before averting his eyes.

“I mean, children.”

“I thought you hated me.” Raleigh said curiously, leading his spouse up the endless stairs of Hell.

Chuck’s expression was wistful.

“Might brighten up the place a little.”

Raleigh remembered with a pang that Chuck was a sea-dweller, a surface dweller, and as much as he loved Yancy’s indoor pool, he missed the sun and the salty seas. He wondered, not for the first time, where his family was.

The ocean had a Shatterdome of its own. Did they know about Chuck’s marriage? Did they approve? Did they disapprove? Had shepherding seals been his life before Raleigh met him?

“Hey” He grabbed Chuck’s hand. “Why don’t we visit the surface next week just you and me? We can make it a picnic.”

“I’d like that.” The sea god said slowly, squeezing back. Two perfect dimples appeared on his face as his smile widened, brightening up the entire room. “I’d like that a lot.”

 

Mako’s present was the last they received.

Yancy admired a sword, a wakizashi with deer and wolves decorating its hilt.

Raleigh tore into the envelope, eager to hear what Mako wanted to say.

All thoughts fled his mind when he saw the words. He read them twice just to be clear. Thrice when he couldn’t believe his eyes. Yancy took the letter from his hands when he felt something amiss.

“ _I am glad you have found someone else_.”

“We done yet?” Chuck drifted over, his shoulders hunched and sulking. 

Raleigh stared blankly.

“I’ve got to go talk to her.”

“Ray, Raleigh” Yancy warned, having read the expression on his brother-in-law’s face. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

“Is she the one?” Chuck interrupted rudely. “Your girl?”

“There’s been a mistake." Raleigh said, ignoring both. "I need to see her.”

He started towards the gate.

“So that’s it?” Chuck snarled, blocking his way. “The bitch snaps her fingers and...”

Blood sprayed on the floor, dark, almost black in the shadowy realm of Hell.

“Hell’s _bells_ Raleigh!” Yancy shouted, getting in between them.

“Don’t you dare talk about her like that!”

But the sea god gave back as good as he got, his movements too expressive to land a second hit. Raleigh bent him over one knee and planted a fist in his ribs, feeling the bone give way with a dull crack. Chuck gasped and slumped to his knees, his eyes glazed liquid silver in pain.

Yancy and Jazmine separated them, Chuck taken to Hermann for emergency first aid while Raleigh wilted beneath his older brother’s disapproval.

When Chuck didn’t come to bed that night, he wasn’t too surprised.

The next morning, Raleigh couldn’t move.

 

“Shit, we need to get you to Vanessa, stat.”

“No don’t.” His hand flopped uselessly and struck Yancy’s elbow.

“What do you mean no?” His brother stressed, a hand sliding beneath his head and hips to lift him up.

“Won’t work.” Raleigh hissed, gritting through his teeth. “Brought this on myself.” When Yancy didn’t look any clearer on what he was trying to say, he explained. “Hit him. Wasn’t supposed to. Contract.”

“Hell’s bells Ray.”

“I didn’t...” Raleigh cringed, his skin stretched too taut around his frame. “It’s just he called her...”

“I know, I was there.”

“Where is he?” He asked, seeking the cool comfort of Yancy’s hands.

“I don’t know.”

“Could you go check on him? Please?”

 

“From your dearly beloved.” Jazmine said, unceremoniously dumping the contents of a bottle on his head.

Raleigh sputtered and screamed murder. But he felt much better afterwards, no longer as feverish as he had been. He rolled to his side, allowing the human servants to change his sheets.

“Is he okay?” He croaked, tasting salt against his cheek. It had a strange sour ring to it as though it had been wrought unwillingly. He chased it around in his mouth for a moment before it disappeared, melted against his tongue.

“Sure” His sister said easily, plunging a scrap of cloth into a basin by his bedside as though threatening to smother him with it. “He’s been married not three weeks and his husband is already thinking of a second marriage.” She wiped the sweat from his eyes and added sickeningly sweet, “He’s perfectly fine.”

 

“You _idiot_.”

“Go away Tendo.” Raleigh mumbled, content to smother himself with a pillow.

The god of love sighed and sat down at the foot of his bed, winged sandals making soft whooshing sound as they flapped through the air.

“Tell me you at least _read_ the contract.”

 

Even Mako came to visit though he was in no condition to enjoy it.

She looked radiant as always, the blue highlights in her hair as fine as silk ribbons. Her palm slid beneath his, cool and calloused, as strong as any god’s or goddess’s.

Mako was a relic of the Anteverse, the once great city. After the waves retreated to the sea, she remained its only human survivor, crying as she clung to the church steeple. Pentecost had taken pity on the mortal girl and raised her as his own. Though she was the goddess of the hunt and the forge, it was her human idiosyncrasies Raleigh fell in love with like her compassion to lesser beings, her savagery in her kills and her diplomacy in coming face-to-face with the other ‘woman’.

Chuck hissed like a spooked cat, grey eyes widening to drown out the whites. It was the first time he’d visited and Raleigh was sorry they were meeting like this.

Tendo was right, he was an idiot. It just took him a soul-sucking contract to admit it.

“Hello” Mako greeted politely.

Chuck didn’t say anything in kind. He simply turned around and left.

 

“Statistically, polygamy has a low chance of success. Did you truly think that Mako would lower herself to being your second wife?”

Raleigh gave Vanessa the hairy eyeball. She’d obviously been spending too much time with her husband of late.

“It was supposed to be temporary.” He groaned as she applied poultice to his chest. It smelled foul no matter how much relief it brought him to have lime and mustard spread across his skin.

“Right” She said as she daubed his mouth with ointment. It tasted bitter and sour, like a tree root pureed into a liquid form. “But does Chuck know that?”

 

“Wait” Raleigh croaked, blindly reaching out for the warmth that had been at his side mere seconds before. “Don’t go...” His fingers snagged against a table and he struggled to pull himself up. “Wait. Please? Stay.”

“Oi, easy, easy mate. You’re gonna give yourself a fit.”

“Chuck” Raleigh sighed in relief. Weakly, he groped for the familiar slopes and angles of his consort’s body, the scattering of hair down his chest and belly, the folds of seal skin around his waist. Teeth dangled from a chain around his neck and Raleigh cut himself on the serrated edge, the pain exquisite to his fevered body.

Yet for all the warmth exuded from his pores, Raleigh felt cold. So very cold. He felt the sheets drawn up to his chin and shivered at the rasp of threads over the side of his knees. Animal furs were layered on top of him but he could feel none of it. He began to feel rather like a taxidermist’s skin, the right shape and size but lacking the quality, the inner spark that inspired poets to write and bards to sing.

With a disgruntled sigh, Chuck unraveled the skin from his hips and slipped into bed beside him. He smelled clean, untouched by the defilement of his body. Raleigh thought of pushing him away but curled up against him instead, plastering himself down his side where his skin puckered like goose bumps whenever they touched. He was dying, he could afford to be selfish. His selfishness was what started it in the first place.

Raleigh dozed, his dreams a jumble of memories and reality, bones, death, fear, panic, and darkness. Before Sasha had tossed him the reins, Raleigh had been the terror that lived in men’s hearts, the quiet darkness that grew and grew until it consumed them whole.

“Rals, you alright?” Chuck asked, shaking him awake. He had been talking in his sleep.

“Why are you so nice to me?” He mumbled, nosing along the trail of hairs. Raleigh licked his bellybutton, where his bellybutton should have been, as Chuck shook with some unnamed emotion. The sea god said, “S’ my job.”

Raleigh felt strangely disappointed by the answer.

 

Tendo returned with grim news.

“Got back from Chau. He says that the curse will break itself in a month.”

Jazmine sounded devastated.

“Raleigh doesn’t _have_ a month.” She said shrill. “He’s the king of Hell. He’s an idiot! Doesn’t Chau have provisions for these situations?!”

“Doll” Tendo said, “Chau lives for these situations.”

 

Sometime in the night, Raleigh saw the moon pass over head which was a little weird even for him because he was in Hell, he was underground, he broke the contract, broke Chuck’s heart even. But the moon, bright silvery moon, mottled like the back of Chuck’s hide, remained with him, almost close enough to touch.  It leaned down, clouds trailing behind it in pale wisps.

“You always did have the worst timing.” Raleigh told the moon.

In the dark, they were mostly shadows, dabs of torchlight highlighting a swell of muscle here and there and the rippled water. Chuck stared at him from the middle of the pool, his seal-eyes reproachful as they approached, twin stars in the black fabric of the sky.

Rivulets of ink ran off his body as he sweated. Shyly, Chuck swam close, nosing his chin with a whiskered jaw. Careful not to draw blood, he raked his teeth over his throat as his skin peeled back, the silvery seal fur giving way to miles and miles of sun-warm flesh. Like the parody of their wedding gift, Chuck straddled him as a nymph might a man and gripped him tight, his cock standing between them limp like a dead fish.

Tired of patience, the pain and the mocking yet to come, Raleigh bucked, his hips swishing uselessly underwater. Chuck held him down after his first attempt, taking time with his clumsy seduction like a bull mounting his cow for the first time. The sea god’s liquid eyes slid down his body, eliciting heat where there was none, arousal where there was nothing to be had. As though committing every contour, sunken rib and knotted scar to his memory, a hand wrapped around his shoulder, the thumb resting gently against the clavicle and rubbing it as though trying to claim a mark.

Almost carelessly, fingers prodded at his pucker, made easier by the blackened waters of Yancy’s lake. Against the hollow of his belly, Raleigh felt the other god harden, astonishingly hot against his own pound of flesh. He braced himself when his knees were parted, the water coming up to his bottom lip as he was drawn deeper into the pool.

Chuck did not push as their positions were reversed. Raleigh sat in his lap, the head of him resting at his entrance as though waiting for permission. Raleigh glared and tugged at his hair. “C’mon” He rasped. It had been too long since he used his voice. “Do it.”

When he did, it wasn’t so much as pushing in as much it was his body giving way, welcoming the other god home. Chuck was leisurely in his movements, not a drop of water wasted over the edge as he thrust into his tight sheath. The light in his eyes were more obvious close up. They seemed to be exuding brilliance of their own.

Ghostly white light seeped like tears as he picked up speed. Raleigh would have paid better attention but for the blunt edge of pleasure sparking at the base of his spine. He had forgotten how good it felt to be taken, forgot how long it had been since.

Raleigh didn’t last long. Light exploded from him like an impression of warmth. He could see the inside of Chuck’s skull, the ribs in his chest and where they broke before mending, over and over again.

He saw the heart, the slow beating thing pumping syrupy-thick blood to the tips of his finger then back.

He saw the darkness hiding behind it, poison to be drawn out but never touched, covered only by the indifference of the moon and as conspicuous as a spot of blood across white sheets.

He saw the light mirrored in his own chest.

He saw Chuck beside him in the morning fast asleep. Somehow in the night, they had relocated to his bed. It puzzled him until he realized that for the first time in a long while, he was free of pins and needles in his flesh and he reveled in his good fortune, nuzzling the sea god’s ink-damp hair.

Chuck whined and screwed his eyes shut; rolling to his side as though it might make him go away.

 _Never_ —he thought and licked a possessive line from the plump lips to behind his ear.

“Did I tire you out?” He asked in delight, drawing him close.

“Go fuck yourself.” Chuck grumbled.

Raleigh placed a kiss on the tip of his nose to which Chuck scowled and rubbed off against his pillow.

“Be back soon.”

 

Everyone cheered when he took his seat on the throne. Yancy looked like he had seen the dead rise and promptly tackled him for a hug. Jazmine was no less reserved in her feelings, using his stomach as a punching bag before telling him he was the dumbest, stupidest brother she ever had. Hermann shook his hand and Vanessa wished him a swift recovery, fascinated as weariness sloughed off his heels.

It took a while to get everything sorted out. His siblings had done an admirable job in his absence but they had their own roles to fill, dreams to collect, pet monsters to feed. After rearranging the time tables, he ordered in a fresh basket of fish and fruit and a type of pastry he liked before heading back into his room. He wrinkled at the mess on his bed and the splatters of ink. Chuck was finally rubbing off on him.

The sea god stirred from his sleep, eyes bleary as he stared at Raleigh across the room. His stomach dropped. Food forgotten, he was immediately at Chuck’s side, the confusion in his grey eyes ratcheting up his panic to a ten.

“What’s wrong?” Chuck frowned, disturbed at Raleigh’s unease. He rubbed his eyes, his seal pelt spilling lifelessly across the floor. Was it the lighting or did the skin seem smaller somehow, more diminished? “Raleigh?”

There was a fragile quality about him that he did not like—almost as though he was sick.

But that was impossible. His illness had been the result of a broken contract. It wasn’t _contagious_.

Thankfully, Chuck seemed more like himself as he woke. He perked up at the sight of a freshly caught mackerel and anchovies in the basket. The muscle in his stomach unclenched as Raleigh let himself relax. As they ate, the servants stripped down most of their bedding, replacing the mattress with a new one.

After dinner, they fell into bed together, content to be with each other just touching.

Maybe this was what Raleigh had been missing out on all along.

By morning, Chuck was gone.

 

Raleigh waited three excruciating days before caving in.

He used the dove that Tendo had given them as a wedding gift, tying a small note around his pink ankle before sending him off. The dove returned in the evening, drenched and unsuccessful, a miserable heap of feathers as he untied the soggy letter from his feet.

The next day, he tried again and again and again.

At last, he simply walked up to his brother’s door and knocked.

“Yancy! Yancy, Yancy, Yancy, Yancy, Yancy...!”

The door swung open, an irate god of sleep behind it.

“Raleigh!” Yancy slapped a hand over his mouth, dragging him back to his room. “Do you know what time it is?”

Raleigh swiped his tongue over his hand and as predicted; his older brother let him go with a yelp, rubbing his spit in his face.

“Where is he?” Raleigh demanded.

“Who?”

“Chuck” He said in frustration. “Where’s Chuck?”

“Why do you need to know?”

“He’s my consort!”

“Not anymore.” The older god shrugged. “You did break the contract.”

Raleigh regarded his brother suspiciously.

“You know something.”

Yancy cleared his throat.

“I have to get back to work. Stay out of trouble okay?”

“ _Yancy_...” Raleigh warned.

“Ray” Yancy replied guardedly. “It was for your own good.”

 

“He came to me. Said he had a way to save you. He’s sea-folk. Vanessa couldn’t find anything. At that point I was just about to make a deal with Chau myself.”

“He stopped you.”

“Yeah”

"So where did he go?"

"We made a deal. His freedom for you."

"I have to find him."

"Raleigh, think this through carefully..."

"I've thought enough!"

"...I'll help you but only if you're doing it for the right reasons and not just because he's the one who got _away_."

Hesistation

"I need him."

"You could write sonnets buddy boy. Good thing Sasha put you in charge because..."

"Alright, alright, I love him, I want him and I want to marry him for the second time even though our marriage vows _included_ through sickness and health and he's a dick for ignoring my calls."

A smile

"Then let's go fishing."

 

Raleigh searched high and low, relegating his duties to Jazmine as he looked. As an interim god of the dead, he was granted Sasha’s helmet through which he could see the world’s dead and dying and those closest to them. But he couldn’t see any of the gods or goddesses, their light blinding through the scope of his scrying. 

“Chuck?” Newt said in surprise as Raleigh drank from his springs, thirsty beyond quick relief. Yancy told him to slow down. He was going to get cramps. But at Chuck’s name, Raleigh looked up.

“Where is he?!” He demanded, his aura exuding death and malice.

Yancy reined him in before he could kill all the trees and squirrels in the surrounding area.

The god of beasts and monsters eeped.

“I saw him a couple of days ago heading towards the sea.” He stammered. “He wasn’t in any trouble I mean, Herc took him.”

“Who?”

Maybe Herc was a friend? A lover?

“Hercules?” Newt said slowly, eyeing the two brothers like they were insane. “The god who makes earthquakes and typhoons happen. Chuck’s his son. You do know that don’t you?”

Yancy and Raleigh looked at each other.

“Shit”

 

Tendo recommended they grovel, a lot.

“But I didn’t do anything.” Yancy protested.

“You’re related to him.” The other god reminded him. “Here we are boys, Siren Shatterdome.”

The Siren Shatterdome was built on an island unattached to land. Angela, the ruling monarch of the seas, was gorgeous and very pregnant, looking like she would pop any second. But her voice was sweet and intoxicating like a cold mug of beer on a hot evening. Speaking with the same rolling accent like Chuck did, she lounged across her throne, unencumbered by the extra weight. The sea goddess listened to his quest thoughtfully as several nymphs brought out refreshments.

“Why such interest in Chuck? He is one of my lesser sons and far inferior in quality to what Siren has to offer.”

Offended on Chuck’s behalf, Raleigh asked “What do you mean?”

“Didn’t you know?” Angela said, fluid in her movements like a fish underwater. “Silly boy, he should have told you. He cannot bear.”

“To be fair” Raleigh said diplomatically. “Most of us lung-breathers can’t.”

Tendo jabbed him in the ribs.

“But he is one of mine.” Angela countered matter-of-fact. “His barrenness is a shame to me.”

“Look lady, ma’am, do you know where your son is?”

Angela sighed. “So impatient.” She gestured towards Tendo who fidgeted beneath her cool gaze. “Just what are they teaching up there?” Nibbling on a crab cake she said, “Very well. Scott!”

A god appeared in a flurry of wind, stubbled and darkly handsome.

“Yo hot mama, what up?”

Angela’s lips tightened with displeasure.

“Where is your brother?”

“Reenacting Free Willy.” Scott answered promptly, winking at them.

He had no idea what the sea god was talking about.

“These three are our guests.” She said, sinking into her throne in an elegant sprawl. “They want to see Chuck.”

At the mention of his name, Scott’s eyes sharpened into two pieces of stone.

“Why?”

Pleased at having elicited a response, Angela answered “It seems that the god of death wishes to make a suit regarding your precious nephew.”

 

Scott had very grudgingly taken them to a lagoon where Chuck seemed to be floating in the water, propped up by something very large and very white.

“See? He’s fine.” The sea god said, trying to steer the boat around. “Can we go now?”

“I want to talk to him.”

Raleigh kicked his brother awake where he had fallen asleep using Tendo as a makeshift pillow. The god of love looked grateful as he pushed the other god off. Yancy staggered and pitched against the side of the boat, making it rock from side to side.  

“Look, it’s pretty clear to me that my nephew does _not_ want to talk to you so why don’t you and your brother...”

Scott had no intention of taking him to Chuck. That was fine. He jumped into the clear waters of the lagoon, determined to at least check that his consort was okay. Yancy shouted in alarm and he began to paddle faster, his leather and armor weighing him down.

Ahead, he could see Chuck getting to his feet, stumbling when the platform he stood on rolled over, throwing him into the sea.

It was a whale, big and black with white patches above its eyes.

“Oh fuck” Raleigh swore when he saw it head straight for him like something out of a nightmare. Before he could even decide which way to go, the whale rammed him, forcing him beneath the surface. Bubbles rose all around him, disorienting his sense of direction. He had no idea which way was up and the whale circled him continuously eyeing him with contempt.

His lungs burned. Gods couldn’t die. They weren’t supposed to die. But when their opponent was another immortal intent on dismembering them alive, he tipped the scales in Hell’s favor.

He would be the laughingstock of every Shatterdome. Whoever heard of a dead king of Hell?

Raleigh’s vision began to blacken around the edges when someone kissed him, forcing air back into his lungs.

His ribs shone through his skin and he could feel a lump inside his ribs, beating like a second heart as he greedily sucked on the other god’s tongue. Chuck pulled at him uselessly pointing left when that was clearly wrong, they had to go up.

He opened his mouth, wasting precious oxygen.

Raleigh could understand why Scott had been so against their reconciliation.

But Chuck was falling from him, eyes curiously pale. It took on the sheen of the blue lagoon and the sunlight beating overhead. A small trickle of air escaped him and Raleigh hugged him hard, trying to find which way was up when something pushed him forward—it was the damned whale who tried to drown him in the first place.

Raleigh held onto the whale’s lower jaw, its inches long teeth cutting into his palm. A second joined them as they rose rapidly. Quick bursts of air came out from the whale’s blowhole and Raleigh understood immediately that it wanted him to use it somehow. Chuck was too far gone. Raleigh gathered the precious amounts of fish-flavored oxygen in his mouth and breathed for him.

They breached the surface. Raleigh was flung through the air, realizing that he could almost see the Sky Shatterdome and maybe that was Pentecost blocking the view of the sun, before hitting the water in the mother of all belly flops.

Yancy fished him out before he could sink again and with Tendo’s help, they fled the scene like bats out of Hell.

The two brothers didn’t chase them; too busy tending to half-drowned Chuck to care.

Their eyes met briefly.

Chuck didn’t want him to go.

 

They played hide and seek over several days. The pair of brothers took turns chasing each other over the great wide ocean. They needed help.

Mako looked troubled as she handed him a golden net.

“This will hold any man, beast or god.” She said solemnly.

“What’s wrong?” Raleigh asked. Even though they weren’t meant to be, he still cared for her.

 The goddess of the hunt and the forge turned her gaze towards the sky.

“There has been no moon for a week.”

 

Raleigh patted his heart, wondering what it was that Chuck saved him with. When asked, Yancy offered tiredly “What do you remember?” But he had no good answer for that. Raleigh had wanted a wife and he’d gotten one. He never intended for anyone to get hurt.

 

Scott screamed his outrage as he was tangled up in the net, black body writhing as Herc tried to pull it off. In the ensuing confusion, Raleigh grabbed Chuck and hauled him aboard. The sea god gasped like a landed fish, his skin bruised and almost transparent. His chest rose and fell in an irregular rhythm. “Rals, Raleigh...”

Herc charged them like a shark that had smelled blood in the water.

“Sorry” Raleigh said and the three winked out of existence.

 

Raleigh recognized the hole the moon left when Chuck handed it over like it was a hunk of rock instead of the thing that made the world go round. He had no idea that the moon did not rest under Pentecost’s jurisdiction. It seemed so obvious considering that the elder god ruled over the heavens and time.

“You learn something new every day.” He muttered.

Chuck looked peaceful in his arms and deceptively heavy like a sunken weight, like the entirety of Hell was pulling at the molecules of his very being. The story came out droopy-eyed and rehearsed. He was dying. Herc stole the moon for him so he would live. With his father cursed as punishment, Chuck came to take over his duties like storm-crafting and tidal waves. Chuck was the god of transitions, of spring and transformations. And it was death which held him in its grips, something he could cure with a wave of his hand.

“You idiot.” Raleigh said, unable to be mad at the god who had saved his life. “I could have fixed this days ago.” He tore the shadow from his heart, tossing it down where it scrambled in mad panic before Yancy crushed it beneath his feet.

“You’re both idiots. See, you were a match made in heaven.”

Raleigh took out a tiny bundle from his pocket and unwrapped it.

The sea god’s eyes widened at the sight of the tiny moon in his palms. He pressed it to Chuck’s palms, curling his fingers around it.

“Your immortality,” He said hastily. “I’m giving it back to you so no pressure or anything.”

“Bastard” Chuck’s voice cracked in the middle. “What are you talking about?”

Raleigh took a deep breath.

“Chuck, will you marry me?”

The sea god tensed in his arms.

“You love Mako.” He said quietly. Until this moment, Raleigh hadn’t known Chuck was capable of quiet.

“I do” Raleigh nodded and in the background, he could hear Yancy groan about the ways how NOT to romance your future spouses. What did his brother know anyway? The longest relationship he had was with a mortal girl who was like a mayfly in their eyes. “I love Mako. She’s like the other half of my soul. But you know what?” He ducked down, breathing against Chuck’s ear. “I love you more.”

Two whales surfaced Styx with a loud whoosh. Raleigh stiffened in dread.

Chuck snorted. “You always did have a shitty sense of timing.”

Hermann came limping out of his toll booth, ready to do some damage. The two whales, unimpressed, ignored him. But when the saw Chuck on the other side of the river, they whistled excitedly and swam forward. Scott took a human shape as soon as he hit the pebbled shore. Herc took a little longer as though he had forgotten how and had to be helped out of the shallows.

“Dad?!”

“How did you two get in here?” Yancy sputtered. “This is a restricted area!”

Scott crossed his arms in a startlingly familiar gesture.

“What, and you drongos really think the dead are smart enough to find their way here? By themselves?”

 Herc turned to Chuck, his face lined prematurely with worry.

“Chuck?”

“Dad, this is my husband.” The younger sea god blushed. “Surprise?”

**Author's Note:**

> “Playing matchmaker now Chau?” Pentecost asked, casting his line.
> 
> Chau took a swig of his beer. “You’d be surprised how much money’s in this.”
> 
> “I should knock your bloody block off.” Herc fumed. “That was my son!”
> 
> “And now he’ll be safe from his mother’s influence. What’s more safe than the god of death?”
> 
> “Substitute god of death.” Herc groused, grinning viciously when the fish took Chau’s bait and swam away. No matter, there were plenty of others in the sea.
> 
> “Details.”


End file.
